Lateral hiring frenzy fuels second exodus of top legal talent in India

Over the past six to seven months, leading law firms Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, JSA Advocates & Solicitors, Trilegal, Indus Law, and Argus Partners have scooped up senior partners and their teams by offering a larger share of the firms’ revenues, better designations, and a compensation that previous employers may not be able to match.

“There has been a marked increase in mid- to senior-level hiring across law firms that want to increase bench strength for corporate and specialist areas driven by the economy,” said Lee Ignatius, co-founder of Vahura, a search and advisory firm focused on legal and governance functions. “Firms are constantly on the lookout for opportunistic and entrepreneurial talent with an existing book of clients that can add more leverage to their client wallet and mindshare.”

These shifts take 6-10 months to make, with partners taking 35-60% of practice revenues. An associate and senior associate can have 1-9 years of experience and then gradually move into the role of a partner.

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Moving out of promoter-led law firms is another factor for the exits, according to Vivek K. Chandy, joint managing partner at JSA Advocates & Solicitors.

“Most of the departures are from firms which are family/promoter owned and controlled, where the founding partners continue to draw large share of profits even where they are not actively involved, or where there is no transparency in how the partnership works or functions,” said Chandy. To be sure, JSA does not have a promoter.

Suneeth Katarki, founding partner of IndusLaw, noted that the hiring spurt started in the wake of the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) announcement regarding the entry of foreign law firms. “The anticipated opening up of the legal market due to regulatory shift prompted a scramble among leading firms to bolster their teams, anticipating increased competition. This expansion drive led to significant lateral movement across the legal industry,” Katarki said.

“Movement within firms is not unusual,” said Harry Chawla, managing partner at Luthra & Luthra, from where quite a few seniors have joined JSA. “However, one is seeing an increase in the frequency, owing to several factors, such as increased competition—expansion of practice areas within law firms—creating niche practice areas with teams of specialized counsel, client expansion, etc.”

Key movements

This month, JSA hired Karan Mitroo as equity partner from Luthra & Luthra Law Offices, along with his team of 15 attorneys including three partners. In January, Pritha Chatterjee was hired from IndusLaw as a retained partner in the banking and finance practice. Shringarika Priyadarshini was hired form Trilegal as retained partner in the Gurugram-based corporate practice. And last September, Arun Kumar and Deepak Chowdhury joined JSA from IndusLaw along with 13 lawyers to work in the infrastructure and real estate practices in Gurugram and Hyderabad.

In law firms, equity partners take home a share of the profits while retained ones get fixed salary plus regular bonuses.

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Some of the new hires at Luthra & Luthra include Samarjit G. Pattnaik, partner handling dispute resolution and white-collar crimes, who joined the firm in February from Karanjawala & Company. Sharad Joshi joined in March from SNG & Partners and will be in the banking/finance and project finance team. And Monalisa Kosaria joined the firm as a partner in dispute resolution this January from B.Shanker Advocates LLP, New Delhi.

Last November, IndusLaw hired Kaushik Mukherjee from Sammaan Capital (formerly Indiabulls Housing Finance) as an equity partner along with his team in the firm’s Mumbai-based capital markets practice group. In January, Megha Arora joined as projects and infrastructure partner from JSA.

No end in sight

The poaching war is not expected to end anytime soon. “We anticipate continued movement within the industry as firms seek to reinforce and expand their capabilities,” Katarki said. The firm has “undertaken a comprehensive review of our compensation framework” to be on par with the top paymasters in the sector.

Argus Partners’ managing partner Krishnava Dutt pointed out that as “businesses grow more complex, firms prioritize partners with deep sector expertise and strong client relationships. Lateral hiring is now a key strategy to enhance capabilities, foster innovation, and stay competitive in an evolving legal market”.

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Some of the firm’s recent hires include Anindya Ghosh, Anantha Krishnan Iyer, and Ashwin Krishnan in corporate and PE/ VC practice from Induslaw, Utkarsh Bandhu (from JSA) and Aseem Dhawan (from Trilegal) in finance practice and Aayush Kumar from Nayara Energy in the corporate and M&A Practice.

Trilegal, too, has been in the thick of action. Amongst the hires this year, Aparna Mehra joined the competition law practice from Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co, and Samit D. Shukla joined the real estate practice from DSK Legal.

A note from the management committee of Trilegal to Mint said, “Trilegal is one of the largest equity partnerships in the country, and its unique model has attracted over 50 top-quality lateral partners from other top-tier firms in recent years. This level of lateral partner movement to Trilegal remains unmatched in the history of our industry.”

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